


On Being Fine

by bethagain



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 06:49:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4091065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethagain/pseuds/bethagain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't stay, and that's fine. She didn't need him anyway. Dammit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Being Fine

**Author's Note:**

> Came from a prompt at the kinkmeme, OP wanted a story where Furiosa is mad at herself for being sexually attracted to Max, and eventually some kind of sexytimes ensue. I tried, I really did... and then _this_ happened.

Furiosa’s pissed.

It was a long three weeks but she’s finally up and moving again. The wound in her side is taking its time to heal, but she can sit and stand and walk and if she’s careful, she can manage a torque wrench and a screwdriver without having to swear out loud from the pain.

But when she twists a little too hard or lifts something a little too heavy or when The Dag comes by to visit the workshop and makes her _laugh,_ well dammit. What gets her the most is the gash between her ribs, the one that still hurts every time she takes a deep breath and she’s certainly grateful he didn’t just let her _die,_ but—well, hell.

She’s glad he left. Things are better at the Citadel but not all the way good, and it’s not his place. Not his home, he’s better off out there on the road than here. Where it’s looking like Immortan Joe’s going to be replaced by one of his lackeys, and War Boys who were War Pups just yesterday are squabbling over who gets to drive the few remaining vehicles for a raid on Gas Town, and it’s better, it’s definitely better, but she wonders. What is coming.

No one quite knows what to make of Imperator Furiosa, returned from the road, returned from treason, returned having left the corpse of Immortan Joe drying to dust on the desert behind her and four of his Wives standing tall by her side. Mostly, they’re confused that their prophet could have died. 

Mostly, they stay out of her way.

And mostly, that suits her. She goes about her work. She leads the crew repairing the vehicles that could be salvaged, and building new ones from the scraps that could be brought home. They do her bidding as her crews always did, but it’s not the same. There was never a question in their eyes, before. It’s mostly green young men now, so many of her own War Boys are dead in the desert, food for the scavengers. Those boys who trusted her.

She shakes her head violently—grimaces at the twinge in her side—and wipes her hand across her forehead. She can feel the smudge of engine grease left there. She wonders what it looks like, wonders if she should take more pride in her appearance (like the Wives, who still insist on bathing daily), wonders if he would like her better like this, or—

_Dammit._

He left. He left, he could have stayed and sat by her side and made sure she recovered, he could have stayed and taught the War Pups to drive and clean the guns and shoot, he could have stayed and helped with this work she’s doing now because—because brake drums are heavy and her side hurts and the stump of her arm is sore and those are _not_ tears starting in her eyes.

Furiosa keeps her head down until her eyes have dried a bit, and then she swipes at her face because smears of grease are better than tear tracks, and then she puts the most senior War Boy in charge and leaves the workshop.

She makes her way along the tunnels carved deep in the stone of the Citadel, up to her quarters. She still has her narrow cot and her one window that looks out over the desert and the road. She supposes that they could have been taken away from her. But even after everything, she is still Imperator Furiosa. On the day they returned she had walked tall back to her rooms with the Wives beside her, refusing to lean on their offered shoulders, face still, eyes forward, head up and proud, and only collapsed in pain when she had convinced Toast and Capable and The Dag and Cheedo that she was fine and they could leave her. 

And then she had lain curled on her cot, fire focused in her side, blood still soaking through her harness. And an awareness of an emptiness that she wouldn’t tolerate, damn him, would _not_ tolerate, she is fine and she has been fine and she does not need anyone and she will be fine. And above all she does not need _him._

She is tempted now to curl up again, let her mind go back to him climbing out of the cab of the speeding War Rig, “I’ll do it,” back to him walking into the night and returning, impossible, with guns and ammunition and blood that wasn’t his, back to him watching her, watching her, as she started to breathe easier and he gave her his strength and, “Max, my name is Max,” and oh _hell._

She doesn’t sit on the cot, or on either of the pillow-mounded chairs that Toast the Knowing had brought to her from the Vault. She walks to the window and looks out at the great emptiness, at the gold and orange of the sand, at the green atop the rock tower beside the one where she works and eats and sleeps. 

  


Three days later, one of the War Pups brings word that there is a man at the gate, and that he said Furiosa would know him. 

She goes down to meet him. He’s on foot again, covered in desert dust and hauling a sled with a few jerrycans lashed down with wire and a heap of fabric tossed over a mound of something. “Car broke down,” he says, by way of greeting. 

“How far out?” she says back to him. 

“Few miles.” 

She nods. She will not, she will not smile in relief at seeing him, she will not ask him where he’s been, she will not take the liberty that Capable does, running up behind her, past her, jumping on him with an effusive and un-asked-for hug. He grunts with the sudden weight but hugs back and he even smiles, although it doesn’t last much after he sets her gently down. 

Furiosa waits until the younger woman steps back. She watches for a moment, Capable’s face still shining with welcome, fiery hair curling around her shoulders, trim waist and beautiful skin still barely touched by sun and dust and engine grease, dirt from the gardens carefully cleaned from beneath her nails. And then she turns back to Max and he is watching her, watching Furiosa, and just for a moment she—but, _no._ He left, he left when he could have stayed and she is healing and she is _fine._

“You got trade?” she says to him, and his face doesn’t change. 

There is a moment of stillness, stillness in his blue eyes and sun-darkened face, and the wind is still and Capable is still smiling and Furiosa is still watching, and then. 

“No,” he says. “No trade.” He turns back to the sled and she follows him, and he lifts the dust-covered fabric, and behind her Capable gasps. “They’re yours. Just made it,” he adds. “Water’s out, could use some more.” And then he is done speaking, and in silence he starts lifting the little saplings down from the sled, lining them up in the sand. 

They don’t talk again until later, until the saplings have been hurried away to good dirt and clean water, until Capable has clasped his hands and kissed his cheek and then hurried away after this living treasure he has brought them. Until Furiosa has offered a short nod that says “follow me if you want to” and he has followed her as if it’s obvious, along stone corridors and through arched doorways and up one hundred stairs—because she will be damned if she lets on that climbing stairs _hurts_ —and to the pillow-covered chairs in her quarters, with the window that looks out over the empty. 

She’s aware of the trust this takes. She knows what happened last he was in these corridors. She wonders if he knows that she is trusting him, as much or more. She brings him water from the jug that is always by her window, ceramic that stays cool in the wind that blows up here. And then she watches him, resting in her pillowed chair, leaving dust from his jacket on the cushions and dirt from his shoes on the floor. He watches her, and she wonders if he knows. 

Finally he says, “Thank you.” 

And she thinks, for what, for saving you in the desert, for nearly getting you killed in the desert, for not coming after you when you chose the desert instead of staying here? Because, she thinks. I wouldn’t. I can’t. I won’t. Run after you. But you could have stayed.

And he watches her some more so she looks away. Looks out the window at the green garden and the empty beyond. 

“Look,” he says, and stops. And, minutes later, starts again. “I was. I had.” And silence again, until he gets up and walks to the window, and he speaks to the sand and the dry and the wind. “They were my life,” he says. And minutes later, he says, “He had just started walking.” 

And dammit, she thinks, those are _not_ tears, this man is _not_ standing in her quarters crying, and she will not do this with him, she has her own pain and her own story and she does not need more pain and she is strong and he is strong and he isn’t going to stay and that is fine, and she is _fine._

And twenty minutes later, when Cheedo the Fragile comes to find her, she is still standing by the window, and his arms are still around her, and her face is still buried in his shoulder. And she isn’t fine, she really isn’t. But she will be. 


End file.
